The big news of the last week was the Trump Administration’s backtrack of his not-so implicit threat to take over Greenland by force. It’s of course not surprising that he backed off, as there is not American support to even buy Greenland, much less take it over by force. Further, his proposed tariff increases were […]
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Saturday’s shocking nighttime bagging of Nicholas Maduro was not surprising; indeed it was only a matter of time given the ever-increasing pressure Mr. Trump was putting in the Caribbean. The operation has Marco Rubio’s fingerprints all over it, and while drugs might be the overriding stated concern for Mr. Trump, regime change has always been […]
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A new year, but old bad ideas remain
01 Jan 2026
Happy New Year! We’ll try to be happy even though bad ideas remain. Ever since the Trump era began, we’ve continued to fight over what is conservatism. I believe in the central tenets of limited government, strong foreign policy, free markets, and pro-family, pro-life social policies.* All of these principles allow people to flourish, and […]
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Yes, I sometimes like alliteration. We’ve been chronicling the trials that Mr. Trump’s tariffs have caused the broader economy, and I have regularly warned about the political ramifications of Mr. Trump not meeting the real political market demand of reducing prices. In today’s post I want to highlight two issues. The first is Mr. Trump’s […]
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Why Mr. Trump’s manufacturing renaissance goals are at least short term having the opposite effect
25 Nov 2025
Numerous online commenters are sharing the chart above, which shows that since Liberation day, manufacturing jobs have been declining, not growing. Note the scale; this isn’t a huge drop (~50k+ jobs out of over 12.5M), but it’s down–not up–and Mr. Trump promised all these manufacturing jobs (“we’re bringing them all back”). The question is why. […]
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In what universe should the United States suggest a “peace plan” that gives Russia more Ukrainian territory than it has been able to win on the battlefield? Or that Ukraine, after being invaded repeatedly by a much larger Russia, should have the size of its armed forces limited? And that its security should be guaranteed […]
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Since my last post was pretty gloomy for Republican-leaning voters, consider this comment from Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, who continues to push a per employee tax on Chicago businesses, even after the city council’s finance committee soundly rejected it (from the WSJ): Yet Mr. Johnson is doubling down. “The corporate tax is in this budget. […]
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Mr. Trump’s failed political entrepreneurship. Why Trump 2.0 appears that peak Trump has passed.
22 Nov 2025
A big focus area for me in my day job as dean of the business school is to prepare our students for leadership in the market. This includes a large focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. One of the key lessons we push early on is the idea of listening to the market, following Eric Reis’s […]
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Dealing with Mr. Trump. “Suck Up or Shut Up?”
18 Nov 2025
So reads a headline in The Economist magazine in discussing how CEOs of major corporations have to deal with Donald Trump. Mr. Trump, notorious of wanting adulation, demands supplicants give laudatory remarks about him to gain or stay in his good graces. This morning I read in the WSJ an op-ed by Kevin Warsh on […]
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Adam Smith 5, Donald Trump Zero: Trump forced to pull tariffs back due to affordability concerns
16 Nov 2025
As we predicted here at BATG, consumers feeling the pressure of higher prices related to tariffs are expressing significant disillusionment with Mr. Trump’s economic policies. And as we talked about last week, the election results resonated with concerns over affordability. Even many conservative commentators are warning Mr. Trump to stop trying to tell people that […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach